Early Britain eBook

CHAPTER VII.

THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT.

It has been usual to represent the English conquest
of South-eastern Britain as an absolute change of
race throughout the greater part of our island.
The Anglo-Saxons, it is commonly believed, came to
England and the Lowlands of Scotland in overpowering
numbers, and actually exterminated or drove into the
rugged west the native Celts. The population
of the whole country south of Forth and Clyde is supposed
to be now, and to have been ever since the conquest,
purely Teutonic or Scandinavian in blood, save only
in Wales, Cornwall, and, perhaps, Cumberland and Galloway.
But of late years this belief has met with strenuous
opposition from several able scholars; and though many
of our greatest historians still uphold the Teutonic
theory, with certain modifications and admissions,
there are, nevertheless, good reasons which may lead
us to believe that a large proportion of the Celts
were spared as tillers of the soil, and that Celtic
blood may yet be found abundantly even in the most
Teutonic portions of England.

In the first place, it must be remembered that, by
common consent, only the east and south coasts and
the country as far as the central dividing ridge can
be accounted as to any overwhelming extent English
in blood. It is admitted that the population
of the Scottish Highlands, of Wales, and of Cornwall
is certainly Celtic. It is also admitted that
there exists a large mixed population of Celts and
Teutons in Strathclyde and Cumbria, in Lancashire,
in the Severn Valley, in Devon, Somerset, and Dorset.
The northern and western half of Britain is acknowledged
to be mainly Celtic. Thus the question really
narrows itself down to the ethnical peculiarities
of the south and east.

Here, the surest evidence is that of anthropology.
We know that the pure Anglo-Saxons were a round-skulled,
fair-haired, light-eyed, blonde-complexioned race;
and we know that wherever (if anywhere) we find unmixed
Germanic races at the present day, High Dutch, Low
Dutch, or Scandinavian, we always meet with some of
these same personal peculiarities in almost every
individual of the community. But we also know
that the Celts, originally themselves a similar blonde
Aryan race, mixed largely in Britain with one or more
long-skulled dark-haired, black-eyed, and brown-complexioned
races, generally identified with the Basques or Euskarians,
and with the Ligurians. The nation which resulted
from this mixture showed traces of both types, being
sometimes blonde, sometimes brunette; sometimes black-haired,
sometimes red-haired, and sometimes yellow-haired.
Individuals of all these types are still found in
the undoubtedly Celtic portions of Britain, though
the dark type there unquestionably preponderates so
far as numbers are concerned. It is this mixed
race of fair and dark people, of Aryan Celts with
non-Aryan Euskarians or Ligurians, which we usually
describe as Celtic in modern Britain, by contradistinction
to the later wave of Teutonic English.